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Onboarding refers to the initial process through which participants are welcomed, oriented, and supported as they enter a community, platform, or participatory process. It includes not only practical guidance, such as how to use tools or understand procedures, but also an introduction to shared norms, expectations, and relationships online.

Onboarding is a critical moment for care, trust-building, and the redistribution of power, rather than a neutral or purely technical step. This approach is reflected in community practices such as those developed by Geochicas, a feminist collective within OpenStreetMap, which foregrounds mentored and collective onboarding to foster confidence and counter gendered and racialised exclusion in technical communities. Onboarding is treated as a social and political process, one that combines technical orientation with explicit community agreements, gradual participation, and human points of contact, thereby transforming digital platforms into spaces of collective learning, accountability, and relative safety rather than sites of individualised risk. So in this pre-process phase, how might you rethink onboarding?

Set up easy participation wins 

Designing onboarding to include early, low-threshold participation opportunities helps address three key facets of onboarding to a platform: social, functional, and emotional. Creating “easy participation wins”, such as inviting newcomers to introduce themselves in a discussion group or to contribute to a small collective decision, builds familiarity with the tools (functional), fosters connection and visibility within the group (social), and strengthens confidence and a sense of belonging (emotional). These structured entry points reduce anxiety, clarify expectations through practice, and demonstrate that participation is both possible and valued from the outset. 

Organisers and facilitators can even invite newer members to co-facilitate an activity or help summarise a discussion, building confidence step by step. Encourage those who have recently joined to help welcome and guide even newer participants, reinforcing a culture of shared learning. Onboarding and care should be distributed across the community, not carried only by moderators or organisers.

Offer small, easy ways to participate:

• A welcome thread: “Introduce yourself (optional)”

• Short polls

• Create simple discussion thread questions like: “What is most important to you about this topic?”

Lower the threshold for leadership

Invite newcomers to initiate or co-lead small activities with support, so they can build confidence gradually. Where possible, make leadership roles temporary, shared, or rotational to prevent power from concentrating in the same hands. Emphasise that leadership is not about being the expert or having all the answers, but about care, coordination, and helping the group move forward together. When leadership is framed as a shared responsibility rather than authority, more people feel able to step in and contribute.

You can:

• Invite new participants to help co-lead a discussion

• Rotate facilitation roles in meetings

• Share responsibilities for making hybrid and digital participation happen (note-taking, summarising, welcoming newcomers)

Design onboarding as accompaniment (acompañamiento)

When organisers are introducing Decidim or a new platform to marginalised participants, the emphasis should be on learning about the platform together rather than delivering a top-down training. Onboarding is not just “here is how the platform works.” It is about making the platform accessible and helping people feel confident, welcome, and able to participate on their own terms. Drawing on Latin American feminist traditions of acompañamiento, a practice of walking alongside rather than directing from above (Segato, 2016), organisers can approach onboarding as relational support rather than technical instruction. Think of it like students learning to code side by side, or a knitting circle trying a new pattern: the organiser may know more about the tool, but everyone experiments, asks questions, and solves problems collectively. Instead of positioning themselves as the sole experts, organisers can encourage participants to explore features together, share discoveries, and support one another. Questions, confusion, and mistakes should be treated as a normal part of learning, like debugging code or undoing stitches, not as a lack of ability. This approach builds confidence, reduces hierarchy, and helps participants feel that the platform belongs to them, not just to the organisers.

Practical actions:

• Pair participants so that they can learn together

• Using the Decidim the Game card game in the toolbox to explore designing the online spaces

  

Always provide:

• A space to answer questions or work through problems together, this can be a discussion thread, an in-person meeting 

Co-Develop Norms for Digital–Offline Connection

Participants can and should help shape how it functions. Invite reflection questions such as:

• What can we do to make the platform accessible for all?

• How should we summarise meetings on Decidim?

• What feels safe/affirming/important to publish? What does not?

• How should disagreements be documented? (Maybe it would be helpful for collective memory or future spaces)

• How do we ensure offline voices appear in the online archive?

This turns the platform into a co-governed space rather than an imposed infrastructure. Participants can:

• Volunteer to co-write summaries with participants who can build their confidence by working together

• Help define how feedback loops work between meetings and online discussions

This builds ownership and strengthens collaboration in the process.